10 haunted houses that drove their tenants mad (With Pictures)

7. Lemp Mansion

The Lemp Mansion located in Benton Park, St. Louis Missouri was built in 1868 and at one point in its history part of the home served as a brewery. The home was also witness to five separate deaths and suicides – on different occasions. The patriarch of the family was Johann Adam Lemp who settled in St. Louis from Germany. He was one of the first people in the United States to produce a German Lager in the country. His son, William J. Lemp, founded the Western Brewing Company with himself as president and his son William Jr. as Vice President. Also See: The 15 weirdest celebrity pets (With Pictures)

William Sr. had other children, – Louis, Edwin, Frederick, Charles and Elsa. After Frederick died of heart failure William Sr. grew greatly depressed. When the dear friend of William Sr., Frederick Pabst, the founder of the Pabst Brewing Company, died, the grief so overcame him that he killed himself in the house in 1904. Elsa Lemp, the youngest child of William Sr., also would go on to commit suicide, shooting herself in the chest days after remarrying her first husband.

The brewery was closed due to prohibition and shortly after William Jr. shot himself in the house. Charles Lemp shot and killed himself in 1949 leaving behind a suicide note and clear instructions on how to lay his remains. In the suicide note Charles blamed only himself. He may have done this given rumors had begun circulating about the number of suicides in the family, alluding that perhaps some of these suicides could have actually been murder. Charles requested that his body not be interred in the family plot, and that his body not be cleaned, nor his clothes changed, or a death notice printed, regardless of what any living family may have wanted. His ashes were to be placed in a box and then buried on his farm.

Edwin picked up his brother’s remains and drove them to the farm, even though to this date no one knows where that farm actual is. Edwin left the mansion, settling in Kirkwood, but as he grew older he always maintained a companion on his property as he feared being alone. Edwin died in 1970 of natural causes, ending his family line. There were attempts to use the mansion as a boarding house, but it was difficult to keep tenants. Tenants would complain of ghostly knocks, and unexplained footsteps. These rumors drove all future tenants out. The home was eventually purchased and converted to a restaurant and inn that regularly holds paranormal groups.